By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
According to a new Gallup poll, conservatism is on the rise in the U.S. with 40 percent of Americans now describing themselves as conservative and only 21 percent saying they are liberal. These new numbers represent a three percentage point increase in conservatism among the public at large.
The new poll is based on 10 separate surveys conducted from January to May of this year, a time when liberal politics appeared to be on the rise in the U.S. with the inauguration of one of the most left-leaning presidents in the nation’s history. According to this poll, however, only a small percentage of Americans share President Barack Obama’s worldview.
Gallup’s polling found that very few Americans define themselves at the extreme ends of the political spectrum. Only nine percent call themselves “very conservative” and just five percent say they are “very liberal.” The vast majority of self-described liberals and conservatives identify with the unmodified form of their chosen label.
Even though 36 percent of Americans are registered Democrat, 28 percent Republican and 37 percent Independent, there is an important distinction to make. A solid majority of Republicans appear to be on the same page with 73 percent calling themselves conservative, while Democrats are more divided. The major division among Democrats is between self-defined moderates (40%) and liberals (38%). However, 22 percent of Democrats consider themselves conservative, a much higher than the three percent of Republicans who identify themselves as liberal.
Almost half of all Independents (45%) describe their political views as “moderate” with the balance of respondents saying they lean more conservative than liberal.
“Gallup trends show a slight increase since 2008 in the percentages of all three party groups calling themselves ‘conservative,’ which accounts for the three percentage-point increase among the public at large,” the report said.
The survey also found that women are more likely than men to be Democratic in their political orientation and are more likely to be either moderate or liberal than conservative in their leanings. However, conservatism still outweighs liberalism among both genders.
“The pattern is strikingly different on the basis of age, and this could have important political implications in the years ahead,” the report says. “Whereas middle-aged and older Americans lean conservative (vs. liberal) in their politics by at least two to one, adults aged 18 to 29 are just as likely to say their political views are liberal (31%) as to say they are conservative (30%).”
The bottom line is that although the terms may mean different things to different people, Americans peg themselves into one of five categories along the conservative-to-liberal spectrum. At present, large minorities describe their views as either moderate or conservative — with conservatives the larger group — whereas only about one in five consider themselves liberal.
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